


“Marry me, Danny”

by lilactreesinwinter



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Marriage Proposal, TATINOF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 12:20:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9607379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilactreesinwinter/pseuds/lilactreesinwinter
Summary: Dan and Phil are nearing the end of their TATINOF tour and contemplating their next life choices.Excerpt:Phil slid down out of his seat to rest his head on Dan’s knees. It was an awkward fit, but they were used to wedging their long limbs into tight spaces. Dan looked down into the eyes of blue, green, and yellow that had always been able to see into his soul. He stroked Phil’s fringe, remembering when it was so long that he had to brush it out of his own eyes when Phil leant over to kiss him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> [Originally posted on Tumblr](https://phinalphantasy7.tumblr.com/post/146390759144/marry-me-danny) on 23 June 2016.
> 
> From the perspective of the Post-Baking Universe, June 2016 seems nearly as long ago as 2009!

The door of the tour bus sighed closed, muffling the latest wave of girlish shrieks that had crashed around them for weeks. Dan slumped into the seat by the small table. He had been flawless in the show tonight, evoking the weeping adoration of the crowd. He was a formidable showman in the safety of centre stage, his brash public persona concealing his shy awkwardness. But Phil could tell the other parts were wearing on him—hugging a hundred girls a night, chatting them up, signing their books, putting on their flower crowns or funny hats. And taking each girl’s selfie with them—Dan was invariably sweetly charming, but Phil could tell the smile wasn’t always reaching his eyes.

Phil sat opposite Dan and regarded the man he had held in his heart for nearly seven years—since Dan was frankly still a boy, and Phil was younger than Dan was now. Dan had always been a bit wild and unpredictable, traits that had captivated Phil from the beginning, but which sometimes made loving him a bit hard. While Dan had gotten his public outbursts under control, he could still be counted on to be just a bit over the top.

Of course, their public relationship—their _ship_ —had gotten pretty over the top too, and Phil had to take some of the responsibility for that. It had been easy enough to turn that artificial relationship—with its “bants” and innuendo—on and off when it was just for a video or their radio show. But now that they were spending so much time on tour, in the public eye day in and day out, Phil worried that one day it would be hard to take the masks off.

The masks had become necessary, to keep their real lives private. The openness and genuineness of their early days online together would not be sustainable on today’s internet, where millions of people pored over every pixel. Phil certainly could never now tackle Dan to the floor in a video or even just reach out to stroke his back; instead they packed their videos—and their show—with bants laden with sexual innuendo so obvious that no one should be able to take it seriously. Somehow, in parallel to real life, they had managed to create the “Dan and Phil” brand—a very successful brand, overtly “best friends” and implicitly bromance/phan/ship-it-as-you-like. But that brand had become less of a shield and more like a set of shackles.

Phil sat up suddenly, startling a widening in his companion’s drowsy dark eyes.

“Marry me, Danny.”

“What?!”

Phil slid down out of his seat to rest his head on Dan’s knees. It was an awkward fit, but they were used to wedging their long limbs into tight spaces. Dan looked down into the eyes of blue, green, and yellow that had always been able to see into his soul. He stroked Phil’s fringe, remembering when it was so long that he had to brush it out of his own eyes when Phil leant over to kiss him. He thought, as he so often did, about what it would be like if Phil let the black hair grow out and was his natural tawny color all over, maybe even letting the stubble grow on his cheeks and chin. Phil was never far from his thoughts, or his feelings, even when he didn’t know what those feelings meant. Which was most of the time.

Dan had found and befriended Phil online, with much flirtation and verbal horseplay across social media. When they finally met in person, though, it all became real, more quickly and confusingly than he ever would have thought, even while they continued the joking around online for their small but growing YouTube audience. They hadn’t set out to establish a “Dan and Phil” brand, of course. But because they had more-or-less accidentally put their falling in love up online for the world to see, they couldn’t escape the knowing comments and sincere questions. They were careful to never give a straight answer; after all their relationship was for them to figure out, not the fans of their videos. How could they have known that some day literally millions of people would be watching?

Over the years, it had all become such a hall of mirrors—the unintended revelations, the denials, the misdirections. And somehow out of it all the two of them had built “Dan and Phil”, and separated it from Dan and Phil, into a sort of alternate universe. It was working, finally, wasn’t it? Sometimes Dan panicked that he was losing Phil behind the mirrors, and he was blundering about looking for him. And then there Phil was, waiting for him on the other side.

Phil watched all the emotions drifting across Dan’s face, the face he loved every way he knew how, with his hands and his lips and his camera. He knew Dan was wondering how they could just stop doing what they had been doing for so long. And how they could to be entertainers without their brand, or worse, give up their hard-won privacy by merging Dan and Phil into “Dan and Phil”.

“You know I will never love anyone like I love you, Dan. But I don’t want our relationship to be our product any more. We’ve done amazing things. It’s the perfect time to walk away. The BBC has those projects waiting for you if you want them. And I really think you should go back on stage and do some Shakespeare. For me, it’s time I really focused on the new video work I want to do.”

Phil took Dan’s hands. “I know you care about the fans. But now let’s go raise some daughters of our own.”

* * *

_TABINOF2_ sold respectably, even though it never topped the book charts like its predecessor. _TATINOF2_ hit many of the same cities as the sold-out _TATINOF_ tour, as well as some smaller locales. But the girls who had begged them to come three years ago had mostly moved on, replaced by fans who were still adoring, but seemed a bit baffled as to why they were there. The subscription rates on all the YouTube channels in the “Dan and Phil” empire had flattened and the videos weren’t getting as many views as they used to. The YouTuber community that had been so vibrant a decade ago was was feeling frayed and dissipated, and did not seem to be adapting well to the latest media technologies. The “Dan and Phil” brand was still formidable, but it was becoming inescapable that it was playing out. They spent a few months after the end of the tour brainstorming new projects, but came up empty. And they discovered as well that their core project, the love between the two of them, had also become empty over the past few years. So on 25 October 2019, Dan and Phil posted a brief “Goodbye, Internet” on all of their channels and went their separate ways.

* * *

Summer was winding down in London. 2016 had seen the worst yet of the now-annual July heatwaves; Londoners were getting used to it being too hot to function in summer. But late August was cooler and rainy—back to normal. There were plenty of tourists, of course, but the throngs were thinning as people turned their attention to an autumn of school and work. Thus it went nearly unremarked when on an early Tuesday afternoon two tall young men holding hands exited the Kensington and Chelsea Register Office. As their family clustered around them in a brief flurry of confetti, they paused to kiss and gaze into each other’s eyes. And then they turned the corner and were somehow gone before the startled girl on the pavement opposite could manage to grab either her friend’s arm or her phone. “They’ve gone,” she whispered. “They are no longer ours.”


End file.
